The Librarian and the Fox Princess: a Donghua Dijun and Bai Fengjiu story, V.I

Chapter 17 - And So It May End

Dong Hua wiped the blood off of his lips. He had been coughing for half the day. He had thrown a privacy barrier around his room so no one would hear. His chest and abdomen muscles were sore and stretched thin from the violent spasms. He had eaten half a lingzhi mushroom raw to slow down the effects of the poison. He meditated for several hours to stabilize his meridians and discovered that the poison had at this point befouled his internal organs and seeped deep into his bones. 

This was the last stage before death. 

While in his meditative state, he had used his sight to track the origins of this poison that was quickly rendering him basically bedridden. He barely had the strength to sit up and it took every ounce of focus to stay alert. 

A picture of darkness and foliage appeared before his closed eyes. A flash of blue light was thrown against the inside of his eyelids, and then he saw it. When he used his cultivation to wrap her in a protective cocoon of his energies against the attack from the demons, he had been infected by this stealth pathogen. It was a slow-acting and insidious poison that lay dormant after he had first tried to heal himself in the abandoned house. 

He was so distracted by her charmingly gate-crashing into his life that he had not prudently sought out to exterminate the poison that had already covertly festered and rooted itself within his cultivation. 

 He had felt fine over the last couple of days. He remembered his chest and body aching on their last day in the Fang Xu Realm, especially when he was struggling with his emotions. When she took him into her aura, she had actually subdued the infection with her own cultivation. 

Deep unregulated emotions seemed to aggravate the symptoms but being able to process those emotions also helped to reduce the overall burden of pain. 

He surmised that had he not been with her that whole time, under her tender and observant heart, his primordial spirit would most likely have expired by this point. Her ability to help guide him through the cavernous dark night of his moods had saved his life. 

Because Dong Hua had lived through and witnessed unending cycles of birth, illness, and death,  he was deeply acquainted with not only suffering, but also healing. He had been witness to countless maladies, plagues, and contagions. While not at the same level of Zhe Yan, he was himself a skilled herbalist and medicinal healer. 

Years on the battlefield with so many of his subordinates succumbing to the most horrifying injuries and attacks had honed his skills as a practitioner.  He had not practiced medicine on a regular basis in a very long time and found it ironic that his rusty skills would be put to the test, on himself. 

The darkest and most formidable truth about the state of his health was that he could now sense that he was contagious to others. A gripping and horrific realization passed through him as he thought about his beloved Xiao Bai and if he had infected her. 

After he initially meditated in the abandoned house with her, he had at that point suppressed the worst parts of it. Soon after, he had used his cultivation to craft the peach blossom jade pendant for her. He was sure that she had been protected from that point on. 

He sighed with relief. He no doubt weakened himself further by doing that, giving the poison an open window to slither in, but he'd do it again if he had the chance. Had he not done that, his little fox would be taken from him already. 

He pulled out her charm from his sleeve and brought it up to his lips. Even the blood on his mouth couldn't stain the petal that was protected with her essence. She had made it to be perfect, just like her, pristine and unsullied. 

He couldn't bear the thought of not being able to see her tomorrow as he had promised. In his state, he could barely make it off his bed much less travel to Qing Qiu. And then there was the fact that he was basically the incarnation of pestilence, a scourge to anyone he would be in close proximity to.  He had a selfish desire to find a way to tell her everything that was happening so she wouldn't misunderstand him. But the almighty god and former ruler of all the realms was not so naive.